I’m very left wing, but a take I’m seeing increasingly from leftists, American ones almost exclusively, that I can’t stand, is that guns are good, Actually, and that gun control is bad

There’s this naive belief that leftists need guns to be able to resist fascism but America is full of guns right now which are relatively easy to get hold of and there are still plenty of fascists, so,

The American left’s “well as long as it’s us with the guns then guns are good” amounts to the same as the right wing’s dumb “good guy with a gun” argument

“The state is authoritarian and heavy militarised so we need guns to combat that” yeah the US police and military are so powerful that a couple of AR-15s are not going to help you against tanks and stealth bombers and drones and a vast surveillance network.

It would be better to demilitarise and defund and eventually abolish those institutions, which - guess what - falls under gun control! When I say I want gun control, that includes those over funded and militarised institutions.

When there are people on the US left being pro gun, they might not realise it, but it seems like it’s just US propaganda and societal love of guns manifesting itself again, albeit dressed up in leftist rhetoric to justify it. The prevalence of guns in the US is not normal!

To me, when people in the US continue to be slaughtered in regular shootings, it is indefensible to continue to argue for a lack of gun control, even if you dress it up with faux leftist arguments. And, in fact, the latter feels majorly hypocritical.

Just admit you can’t imagine a society with fewer guns because your country has drilled it into you that it’s normal, when it is not

In case you think I’m wrong that such people on the left exist, here’s just one thread of many arguing the very thing I’m criticising here

It’s a nonsense argument, it doesn’t make you less likely to be murdered if the other person has a gun, it just means you’ll both die most likely, and possibly other people too, innocent bystanders. All guns can do is increase fatalities. They do not defend.

So often when there is yet another mass shooting they find that someone nearby, a security guard or even a civilian, was armed. It rarely, if ever, does any good.